Time Essay: U.S. Prisons: Myth vs. Mayhem

In the endless effort to cope with one of the world's higher crime
rates, the U.S. has long sent more people to prison for longer terms
than any other industrialized Western nation except South Africa. Yet
the country's penal institutions add up to a national disgrace. Riotous
prison disorders have become so common that it was only second-rate
news last March when a guard was wounded and several others were taken
hostage during a mutiny of 100 or so inmates in a Newark, N.J., jail.
In fact, the event seemed trivial only because it came so soon after
the epic mayhem...